


there are no romantic endings

by starforged



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Exes That Care, Gen, Jon is sort of here but not really, Season 3 Finale, Season 3 Spoilers, Spoilers, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 09:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16784077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/pseuds/starforged
Summary: “Oh! Oh, sorry!”Spell broken, Georgie blinked and looked up at the doorway to Jon’s hospital room. A young man stood there, a vase of flowers in his hands. He was tall and a little round about the middle and looked incredibly nervous. Her gaze slid to the flowers. Yellow roses. She wasn’t sure if Jon would appreciate roses, yellow at that. Those words almost tipped out of her mouth, but she figured she would make this well-wisher cried.Georgie wasn’t comfortable with tears.“Oh hello,” she said instead.





	there are no romantic endings

“Oh, Jon.” 

Georgie hadn’t realized that she was still his emergency contact, although it made sense. His grandmother was dead, and his parents had been gone for a long time. All he had was her and that job of his. He hadn’t told her a lot about the Magnus Institute, but what she did know now coupled with her own experiences, she didn’t figure he was going to put any of them down as “emergency contact”.

She grabbed his hand, glad to feel that it was still warm. There was something about a prone body that made her afraid that he’d be cold. Dead. She knows what dead and still and cold looks like, doesn’t she?

No part of Georgina Barker wished to see Jonathan like that.

But there was that absence inside of her that told her to be afraid of losing a man that she used to love deeply. Still did, she supposed. Love is an interesting form, twisting and reshaping itself. 

She cupped both her hands around his. The machines said he was alive, so he was alive. If he died, then he died. She would be sad, heartbroken. 

In the cinema, he would have squeezed her hand back. His eyelids would flutter and he would look at her, her name on his lips. Perhaps that was a bit more romantic than their current relationship required, but it would have been a nice feeling to have. It would have been nice to go back to what they once were. It was a thought that had crossed her mind a time or two when he was hiding out in her place. It had pulsed through her when he had opened up to her, and in return, she had finally let it be known that a piece of her had been claimed by Death.

“Oh! Oh, sorry!”

Spell broken, Georgie blinked and looked up at the doorway to Jon’s hospital room. A young man stood there, a vase of flowers in his hands. He was tall and a little round about the middle and looked incredibly nervous. Her gaze slid to the flowers. Yellow roses. She wasn’t sure if Jon would appreciate roses, yellow at that. Those words almost tipped out of her mouth, but she figured she would make this well-wisher cried.

Georgie wasn’t comfortable with tears.

“Oh hello,” she said instead.

“I didn’t think anyone would. Be here?” He gave her a large, owlish blink.

Her mouth slid into a grin. “Jon doesn’t really strike anyone as the type to inspire people in his hospital room, does he?”

The man gave her an awkward curly smile in return as if he shouldn’t be laughing about this situation or not. “You’re here.”

“A fair point. Well, are you going to come in or just stand there with your flowers?”

He looked down at the vase in his hands as if he had completely forgotten that he had brought it with him to begin with. His face turned a bright, flaming red. She tried to not laugh at him, but he was a bit adorable.

“Er, yes, of course. Unless you want a moment alone?” He was staring at where Georgie’s hands did their best to envelop Jon’s.

“No. I’ve had plenty of time alone with him, I think.”

A coma’d man was a boring man.

He put the vase down on the table; it was the only bit of flowers that decorated the room. Then he stood by them, uncertain of his next move. She could see it cross over his face. Should he leave? Should he stay?

“You can sit,” Georgie told him.

He sat in the other chair so hard that it scraped the floor, and she thought that it might break. Her eyebrows raised high on her forehead, and he blushed an even deeper shade of red. He coughed into his hand.

“I’m… Martin,” he introduced. “Martin Blackwood. Jon is - Jonathan’s my boss?”

“Oh, are you an archival assistant, then?”

Martin nodded. “Yes. Are you - He never talks about his, erm, personal life.”

“I’m Georgie. We used to date.”

It was a good thing that they were in a hospital, she figured, because he looked as though he might have a heart attack on the spot. She flashed him another grin.

“You’re thinking how he scored a babe like me?” she asked.

Martin inhaled like he had never taken a breath in his life. “He seemed like a loner.”

Georgie looked at Jon’s face, lined and drawn in a way that a man in a coma shouldn’t have been. His grey was greyer. He was ashen.

“We both were,” she said. “It was a long time ago, though.”

“Oh.”

One word could say so much. Georgie liked to think that she was a smart girl. Martin seemed like a nice man with a nice crush. He kept looking at Jonathan, at their hands. She wondered if he knew what she knew. Did Martin know about what Jon was going through? Prior to this, that was. 

She sighed. “What happened? Was it the Unknowing?”

He couldn’t have jumped further if she had shocked him with paddles. “He told you that?”

“When he was jobless, I suppose you’d call it, I had a lot of questions. And he had a lot of his own to explore.”

His answer, a question for a question, confirmed her suspicions. Jon had gone off and played the big hero and had gotten hurt over it.

“They were going to set a bomb,” Martin began. “They were going to disrupt the Stranger, but something happened.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head. “Four went in, and two came out. Basira, she said she wasn’t sure what happened in there. Just that they weren’t as prepared as they should have been.”

“Doctor says that physically, Jon’s alright.”

“A coma doesn’t say alright to me.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

Martin hesitated before he laid his hand over Jon’s free one. “I wanted to be more helpful than I was, but he didn’t want me there.”

“He’s never been very good at team playing. Which is funny to me, since he’s always asking for help. Poor boy.” Georgie frowned a bit.

“Do you think that he’ll come back?”

His voice was so small and hopeful. If Jon did, she hoped that he’d be more aware of the people around him that cared. She doubted that, of course, but hope was a lovely feeling to hold inside of yourself.

She watched Martin carefully. “Honestly? I don’t know. If he does, I don’t believe he’ll be the same as he was.”

“Broody, snappish, bossing people around without saying thank you?” Martin laughed, dry and just a little bit broken. 

“Broody is a good way to describe him, but I think it’s just he is so much in his own head and his own needs.”

Martin laughed, a huffing sort of sound that made it seem like he might have been choking on his air rather than laughing. He patted Jon’s hand, as if he didn’t know what else to do. She slid her hands away from Jon’s, hoping it would make this poor fool just a little more comfortable. Maybe she had imagined it, but it seemed like he breathed out a sigh of relief when she did.

“So he’ll be less selfish, you think?” Martin asked her. 

“I would not get your hopes up about that, Martin. Some things are just ingrained. He doesn’t mean to be.” Georgie just hoped that when Jon woke, he would still be that little sliver of human he had been with her. 

She wondered if Martin knew. 

“Just as well,” Martin said with a sigh. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a Jonathan Sims that was more helpful.”


End file.
